Eastwood delivers double blow to luckless Scorsese as veterans slug it out

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The Oscars success was shared around but some got a bigger share
than others, writes Garry Maddox.

If the Australian attention was on Cate Blanchett winning her
first Oscar, the 77th Academy Awards were also memorable for one
Hollywood icon edging out another against the odds.

While Martin Scorsese's epic The Aviator was the hot
favourite to win best picture and director, Clint Eastwood's
emotional boxing movie Million Dollar Baby won both awards
and collected two of the four acting prizes as well.

It was a victory for a beautifully restrained drama over a
dazzling Hollywood spectacle - an encouraging sign that voters
recognised quality filmmaking ahead of showiness and could ignore a
potentially divisive ending.

The 74-year-old Eastwood won his second best director Oscar and
left 62-year-old Scorsese without a win from seven nominations.

Eastwood said making Million Dollar Baby was a wonderful
adventure and jokily thanked his "crack geriatric team". He noted
he had watched 80-year-old director Sidney Lumet collect an
honorary Oscar before receiving his own. "I figure, I'm just a
kid," he said. "I've got a lot of stuff to do yet."

From 11 nominations, The Aviator won five awards,
including Blanchett's success as best supporting actress. The win
made up for her surprise loss to Gwyneth Paltrow when nominated as
best actress for Elizabeth six years ago.

The other wins for The Aviator were for cinematography,
art direction, costume design and editing.

Compared to last year's domination by The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King, the spoils were shared, with Million
Dollar Baby winning four awards and a triumphant moment each
for Ray, Sideways, Finding Neverland,
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The
Motorcycle Diaries, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind, The Incredibles and Spider-Man 2.

From the perspective of the NW Oscars party in Sydney,
one of the highlights was the bubbly acceptance speech by Jamie
Foxx, who won best actor for his uncanny performance as Ray Charles
in Ray. After getting the audience to chant along to a line
from Charles's 1959 hit What'd I Say, Foxx thanked director
Taylor Hackford for taking a chance on the movie.

"I mean that love for Ray Charles was deep, down in the earth,"
he said. "It's cracked open. And it's spilling. And everybody's
drowning in this love."

Playing a white trash boxer in Million Dollar Baby gave
Hilary Swank her second best actress Oscar. Like her first, for
Boys Don't Cry, it came at the expense of Annette Bening. "I
don't know what I did in this life to deserve all this," Swank
said. "I'm just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream."

Repeating a line from Million Dollar Baby, she described
Eastwood as her "mo chuisle" or "darling".

The movie also earned the supporting-actor prize for Morgan
Freeman, who played a wise ex-boxer. In a restrained speech, he
described the movie as a labour of love.

The wins for Foxx, also nominated for best supporting actor for
Collateral, and Freeman, who had been unsuccessful in three
previous nominations, made it only the second time black actors had
won two awards at the same Oscars.

The awards were given an edgy start by presenter Chris Rock, who
urged the audience to "get your asses down" to start the ceremony.
He quickly had a shot at Nicole Kidman for smiling when Halle Berry
won an Oscar.

"The only acting you ever see at the Oscars is when people act
like they're not mad they lost," he said. "I was like, if you'd
done that in the movie, you'd have won an Oscar, girl."

Rock also took shots at George Bush, the academy's love of
movies that audiences never see and the apparent prevalence of Jude
Law in every movie reaching cinemas. "Who is Jude Law?" he
said.

It was a comment that appeared to upset Sean Penn who, when
presenting an award, defended Law as "one of "our finest
actors".

Rock was more mild-mannered than many expected and undermined
his own irreverence by sending greetings to American troops
"fighting for freedom" around the world.